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Michael "lampe" Lazarski
Michael "lampe" Lazarski

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Firefox Multi-Account Containers are awesome!

I use three types of accounts:

  • Private
  • Full-time work
  • Web development work

If you want to know why I'm using three types of accounts. Leave a comment down below.

I'm switching all the time between these accounts on different websites.

Logging into Gmail with my work account and at the same time logging into Gmail with my private account. So I can read both emails.

Another example is YouTube. I'm subscribed to different types of channels on every account.

Firefox Multi-Account Containers to the rescue!

From the day on I discovered them I use them everywhere and Firefox is my main browser because of that.

How do they work?

Firefox has profiles or containers. If you really look behind the scene it's just a folder on your hard drive where firefox saves stuff like your configuration or history and so on.

You can change that profile by starting firefox with the -p flag and then you will be prompted with a list of profiles where you can manage them. So its nothing new but now you can use these profiles within the same window but in different tabs!

Okay, let's set this up

  • 1) Install Firefox ( Hello captain obvious)
  • 2) install this extension
  • 3) Have fun with it!

Now when you long press the new tab button you see this:

firefox screenshot

By default, Firefox creates 5 containers for you!

  • 1) The default container ( no color)
  • 2) The personal container ( Blue )
  • 3) The work container ( Orange )
  • 4) The banking container ( Green )
  • 5) The shopping container ( Pink )

If you want to use them like that just do it is a pretty nice setup.
You can edit them by clicking on the symbol with 4 squares on the right side

firefox screenshot 2

Cool so now we have our multi-account containers and we can log in to 3 google accounts at the same time just a tab away!

tabs screenshot

Thanks for reading!

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Top comments (8)

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link2twenty profile image
Andrew Bone • Edited

I believe chrome has this functionality by default. It's called people. It lets you have several different logins but also lets you have a guest account.

support.google.com/chrome/answer/2...

But it's cool to see this sort of functionality being spread around.

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lampewebdev profile image
Michael "lampe" Lazarski

Hey,

correct me please if I'm wrong but it's not the same.

As these containers are more than just a guest or incognito window.

As far as I know, the people function closes the complete window so you can not have 2 open at the same time.

But please correct me if I'm wrong!

I would like to here more!

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link2twenty profile image
Andrew Bone

You can have several windows open, and each person can have a google account to sync with.

Chrome

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lampewebdev profile image
Michael "lampe" Lazarski

Okay, that's cool! didn't know that :D

Now they should implement in a way so it works in a single window!

Thanks for the info! appreciate it!

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aranapatona profile image
aranapatona

Actually this feature was first available to Firefox, but it was always separate from it, since it was some kind of lab/experiment, requires the containers extension. if you want similar on chrome you need the persona addon for chrome (or else you need separate windows)

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rksomayaji profile image
Sushanth Somayaji

Just not the same. You have to open different windows for the same functionality, Firefox can do it in the same window.

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stantyan profile image
Stan Tyan

I was looking for a similar solution for Chrome and found a SessionBox extension. I gave it a try and it really works like Multi-Account Containers extension in Firefox. However, due to their freemium type of business they force some limitations on free accounts. Gonna stick with Firefox for now.

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aolysenkov profile image
Артём Лысенков

What about antidetect browsers like gologinapp and others? Good alternative?